Social health expert on the evolution of understanding health

1 Oct 2024 · 1 min

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Speaker argues that understanding of health has evolved over time (driven by research, advocacy, policy) and that the next stage is recognizing social health — specifically that social connection strongly influences longevity and physical health. The speaker compares this shift to past changes in public perception (e.g., smoking) and predicts social connection will become as routine a consideration as exercise.

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Health is not just physical and mental like we typically talk about. The way that we understand health over time evolves with new research, with advocacy, with policy and so on. It wasn't that long ago that people smoked cigarettes, just my grandparents and great grandparents, without realizing that it puts them at risk for lung cancer. Right. We need that research to emerge and then that understanding to spread. I believe that this next stage we're going into in our evolution of understanding health is to recognize that it's also social. We have decades of research proving that establishing that whether or not you feel connected determines how long you live and how healthy you are while you're alive. Not just whether or not you're happy, but actually your health and longevity. And increasingly there's awareness around this. And so in the future, I think we're moving to a place where we see connection like we see exercise as something that needs to be a part of the fabric of our lives.